


Overture

by Anusaya



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: 6996, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:10:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anusaya/pseuds/Anusaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mukuro's movie taste is probably very questionable. Also: Relaxing hobbies at Kokuyoland. </p><p>Timeline: Set vaguely in the recent arc at Some Indeterminate Time [but not, or not yet, addressing the issues presented in 386... perhaps in later parts! I do like a smidgeon of angst amid other things].</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overture

**Author's Note:**

> warning for sexual thoughts/actions :|a between minors, oh noes.
> 
> I wanted to write shameless smut. More parts forthcoming, I think, as I have more ideas.

He has a belly button.

Chrome has seen it, during fights, when the wind catches the lower hem of his camouflage top. With the way Mukuro-sama talks, sometimes you would expect that his navel would be flat as a sea of glass, but that little indention, perfectly fit for the thumb to hook itself into, a corkscrew curlique pushing inwards, broadcasts to the world the news of an umbilical cord, severed; a mother, somewhere, and a round curve of rising, breathing baby flesh that existed fifteen years ago. Chrome compares it to her own, which is frequently even more visible. Sitting on the couch, in that hectic, bruised, glowing after-math of battle -- that in-between space before another wave of opponents comes -- licking creamsicles, she lifts her shirt with her free hand and plays a little. 

Breathe in, breathe out. Watch as it sinks and rises, but not in the way that leaves you unable to move. Never let it sink so far again. Watch your navel. Wash your navel. The old words of the absent mother: Wash your navel, but do not place your hands lower, for if you do, that's called masturbation. So look away when you scrub, dear.

Mukuro-sama is standing in the back room, bent over a bowl of cereal with milk and little o's; generic brand, and Chrome does not know whether it tastes of apple or honey.

"Probably," he ventures, aloud, "more like cardboard."

Chrome perks. Sits upright, and wonders how long he has been listening to her at that level.

A soft laugh. "I only sensed your curiosity," he explains. "And now your amazement. It's easy, after so long."

"Ah," she answers, wondering how far back that curiosity sensing might trace, and whether he sensed from her that _earlier_ curiosity about his navel, and what it would feel like to dip her tongue into it; would Mukuro-sama be ticklish? (But that might be inappropriate to think about.)

Mukuro neither confirms nor denies anything. "Would you like some?" Sound of a cereal box shaking; rattle: tat-tat-kat, tat-tat, dry, musicless, like little bones. Otherwise, it is as quiet as Chrome can ever remember at Kokuyoland; quiet because -- "I never had a taste for such foods," Mukuro continues. "I bought them for Fran, you know."

Fran is asleep. Ken and Chikusa are at the local hospital, receiving treatment for battle wounds, possible fractures and concussions, alongside Gokudera, Yamamoto, and others. Mukuro would be more concerned, as would Chrome, if there were not precedent of them surviving worse injuries (in the case of Chikusa, a certain childhood incident involving bodily immolation). Ken will grumble; if the doctors prescribe pills, he will peel off the labels and attempt to dip them down the sink while no one is looking, replacing mugi chocolates into the bottle. Mukuro, however, is used to such tricks; if Ken attempts to play dirty, he will refill the prescription, illusion the pills into mugi chocolates in the first place, and feed them to him one by one, on a perfect schedule.

Without the others represented bodily, there's a strange quiet, a surreal sort of vacancy not fully filled by the fitful sounds of food preparation. Mukuro does not cook, habitually. Verde has wired him something of a microwave. There's a small refrigerator for milk and minor cold goods. Dry bags of finger-ready items, chips and the like. Soft drinks, stacked together, row on row, plastic choke-neck connections, their aluminum skins gleaming silvery in flashes of moonlight peeping in through the broken windows. The high overhead lights, in the style of an auditorium, have been shattered, dirtied, rendered useless by the mudslide of years before, so the teenage inhabitants rely on lamps, or sometimes the glow of candles on nights when the wind is too weak to pose a threat of snuffing out the tiny fires. Tonight, the candles are lit, and the evening is young, and the melted run-off of Chrome's creamsicle drip-drip-drips into a puddle on the hard floor just beyond the edge of the couch. Her eye follows the motion.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the cereal box _thunk_ its way onto the table, sharp corner first: _"Froggy Flakes,"_ she reads, dispassionately, eyeing the exclamatory amphibian mascot.

"As I said -- " Mukuro seats himself comfortably beside her. "For Fran." Another careless laugh. "He -- selected the brand, of course. I prefer the chocolate and marshmallow varieties, if I must have cereal."

He begins crunching wetly beside her, sitting haphazardly with his feet on the couch beneath him, his shoulders leaning heavily on the pillows, his head and face bowed almost reverentially over the bowl, scoop-shovel-slurping in great, unforgiving movements. Somehow, even like this, he is not entirely without grace in those slim fingers; Chrome cannot help but steal a few looks, mesmerized by the contrast of shuffling messiness and "charismatic" elegance. The latter is implied in the lines: Mukuro-sama does nothing without care, no matter his mussed appearance. That is something Chrome would like to have in common with him -- a point she hopes she is on her way towards transitioning to, but the self is always the hardest to measure.

When the creamsicle becomes a popsicle stick, Chrome wraps the leftover piece with some wax paper on the coffee table -- something which had once esconced a sandwich.

It was meant that there should be fireworks. A match in the dark. Something with sound, with luminosity, so their eyes would look to one another in the shadows; it would herald a new age, with Mukuro's living, breathing flesh, his freedom, and Chrome's rising, falling stomach, filled by herself, and finally, their impossible proximity. It was all that they had worked for, and even if, in reality, it had been only months, a glimpse of a decade of this dream unrealized had put the matter into staggering perspective. The future told an unknown tale, but now it's time to get it right. There is no sound of fireworks. No sparks.

When Mukuro finishes the cereal and deposits the bowl on the table, with the spoon _clinking_ loudly into the darkness (in lieu of the fireworks, the trumpet, or another announcement), Chrome nearly jolts, but she manages, after so long in solitary meditation, to keep firm in the face of that terrifying, exhilarating reality of his nearness. She must still fight, even now, for it almost brings her to her knees -- in spite of the banal setting. 

No. Because of the banal setting.

Because it means, finally, he is near enough to touch, and she is ready enough to want to. And perhaps, in the end, the _want_ is difficult to grapple with.

Beside her, Mukuro sweeps his fingers through his hair, and when Chrome turns, steals a sideways glance, she finds her chin caught by the set of appraising fingers belonging to his other hand.

"Mukuro-sama," she says, unflinching; cheeks warm, but not hot enough to tint pink.

"This is your last chance for a taste," he says, teasingly, and kisses her.

~*~

Mukuro-sama's lips are dry, bitten below, and chapping, though you could not see this except very up close; Chrome wonders, wonders if she has been the cause of those red furrows, and she would say sorry, would apologize for hurting him from a distance, but perhaps it is too abrupt. Too abrupt like kissing -- which begins slow, chaste, in little pecking gestures that eventually involve tongues, and by the time the motion has become more sensual, Chrome finds her military green school uniform jacket open and her bra unclasped, areola prickling in the cool night air. After the kissing, or in a pause, she lets Mukuro-sama give her a back massage while they sip soda and watch movies on the DVD player of Ken's game station, as Mukuro sucks her neck and reaches around every so often to apply spidery-fingered pressure to her breasts, kneading them. She gets slick and wet like that, and has no idea what the plot of the movie is. Something about blue people. Oh, no. Is this that new Smurfs movie --

"It was for Fran, also," Mukuro explains, blowing a puff of her hair from her neck. His hands are talented; he knuckles the knots from her back with deliberate, rolling persistence. Chrome wants to give him a turn. He must be sore, too, after the days of battle, the effects of her emotional crisis on him, or Kokuyo in general.

"We could watch something else," Chrome says.

They shouldn't be relaxing at all, says the old voice. They should be training somehow. Readying their weaponry. Going over a lesson. She hasn't decided whether or not she's returning to school. She's fourteen and already almost killed herself from separation anxieties; indecision over the future. She never wanted to hurt herself, she wants to explain. It was never like that.

Mukuro-sama puts in another movie. A dramatic film with mournful faces and epic, soaring musical numbers. Chrome realizes as the opening credits roll that she is half-naked and cool, elbows to her breasts and top draped like a blanket over her arms. Looking at the curve of Mukuro-sama’s back and shoulders as he stoops to switch the video; it had seemed natural, to her – with him, to disrobe to this extent – nothing he had never seen before in their world, and yet –

“Did you ever,” she starts, “watch – when you were younger – “

“I loved to watch animated series as a child,” Mukuro answers, without hesitation, as if the past is open and free and absolved. And then, a little more quietly, with that somber gaze, that heart-sore smile with the little creases at the eye, “And other things. With my senpai.” More quickly: “And before. Before everything – when – “ 

A little more lightly: “There were old VHS players in that place, you know. Would you imagine?” Tapping his fingers to his cheek, as if musing upon the weather. Distant gaze – out through the broken windows, at the open night. “VHS. And now, everything, gone to digital. Well.” Finger snap. “It’s the way of progress. So.” And, finally, he turns to Chrome. “What about you?”

“No,” she says, simply.

She never watched cartoons.

Never had that spot of colour. Life was studying or attending events with her parents, watching them socialize as necessity saw fit. Chrome’s soul, locked in subjugation, proceeded to stagnate; has been stagnating, and only now, she sees, the world is opening petal-bright, dew-wet, lively as if with the power of a new morning.

Mukuro-sama goes down on her. It's kind of funny, quietly so, how he looks up every ten seconds, with that expressive, soft, vulnerable expression he uses with her, as if seeking approval. Chrome holds his hair and tries her best to relax, to enjoy it, in the face of that sweet and silent supplication, a distraction unto itself. She comes, for the first time with someone else, against his mouth and the roughness of that tongue, while the others wait in the hospital, in the bed, away, in the cricket-humming night. And he sags against her: sigh of satisfaction, her hand through his hair, warm reversal of proprietary feelings.

"Well," he says, "I think we missed the end of the movie." Smiling. "But that's all right."

His eyes show his candour, Chrome thinks. 

His eyes are honest. They've always been honest with her and with the boys. She runs a hand along his face -- to the corner of his moist lips, the tips of his hair, which Chrome smells herself on while they lie side by side, attempting to find comfort in sleep. Strands sticky with her, with sweat; she thumbs the rise in the back, and holds the pillows, the sparse sheets, bunching them into her arms, sleeping in her teddy bear pajamas, top and shorts, waking in the middle of the night to walk to the showers, lotion basket in hand.

**Author's Note:**

> mukuro just seems like the kind of ridiculously sincere person [albeit his pretending at deceit/villainy] who would make dere eyes at someone while eating pussy. esp. with chrome, right? all his damn dere.


End file.
